From Cronkite to Colbert

Book excerpt: In a time when increasing numbers of people are tuning out the nightly news and media consumption is falling, the late-night comedians have become some of the most important newscasters in the country. "From Cronkite to Colbert" explains why. It examines an historical path that begins at the height of the network age with Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, when the evening news was considered the authoritative record of the day 's events and forged our assumptions about what the news is, or should be. The book then winds its way through the breakdown of that paradigm of real news and into its reinvention in the unlikely form of such popularized shows as "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report. From Cronkite to Colbert" makes the case that rather than fake news, those shows should be understood as a new kind of journalism, one that has the potential to save the news and reinvigorate the conversation of democracy in today 's society.